How Choose a topic of interest, spend a little time researching it, have a discussion then publish the notes

Why The chief benefit is the fostering of a greater understanding of the world before death and to hopefully prompt further thought and discussion

Introduce the topic: Alternative Energy

Topic Overview

Bodies of ancient biological organisms buried, compressed and cooked over billions of years have produced Petroleum, a complex, hydrocarbon rich, liquid fuel. As a species, we have been burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale for centuries and it has benefited us in terms of standards of living immeasurably. However, there is only so much petroleum underground. It’s getting increasingly harder to extract and will one day, completely run out. There are consequently, environmental, socio-economic and political implications to our dependence. There are many initiatives across the globe dedicated to raising public awareness of our potentially worsening energy situation and an increasingly fruitful effort to make renewable energy solutions realistic.

Off Topic

(What we’re not talking about.)

Penguins

‘Big oil’

Petroleum in manufacturing

Talking Points

Types of energy needs

Transport

Cars

Ships

Trains

Planes

mobile canal diggers

Food

Cooking

Animal feed production

distribution

Warfare

Subs, planes, ships, secure storage, rocket/missile fuel

Manufacturing

heat, electricity

Energy production

Tools for oil extraction

materials production

Problems with current energy solutions

All power comes from the Sun

Hydrocarbons, the basis of all fossil fuels, basically carbon and hydrogen chains.

Oil - petroleum

Coal

Dead organic matter to peat to the best type, anthracite - glassy rocks. Beyond that is pure carbon e.g. graphite or diamonds, mostly useless as fuel.

Natural gas

New technology/initiative Hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking', a process that cracks rock deep underground to release oil and natural gas. More jobs The shale gas revolution swiftly changed the economics of natural gas. It prompted the industry to launch more than 100 projects in the past several years — specifically aimed at taking advantage of low prices — with investments totaling billions of dollars and 50,000 jobs created.

Consider the surface area of the orbit of the earth (average 150 million kilometres): 282.743 billion square Km. Diameter of earth: 12,742 Km 255 million sq Km (half the planet). That’s a lot of solar power beaming off into space. 174 petawatts (10 raised to the power of 15 watts). Good idea might be to spread collector arrays away from the earth and somehow return the power.

Mirror arraysSpanish installations e.g. Gemasolar in southern Spain which has concentric rings of mirrors concentrating the suns rays on a central tower containing salt which stores the energy in it’s seriously molten state.

Off planet - Orbiting solar arrays

Film: Sunshine

Geothermal

Dig deep enough and it’s hot. Really hot.

Wave power

Tides are predictable

water is really heavy

Wind power

Turbines to create electricity

Ugly windmills

Noisy

Cost of the hardware

Unpredictable and intermittent

Gravitation

Something like slingshot

Nuclear

30-ish countries. 195-ish countries in total

production of steam to turn turbines

Risk: Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Actually non-renewable, uranium is finite

Technology can be weaponised

Nimbyism

explosive

Fusion

Nuclear fusion is just that, the fusion of two nuclei to form a larger one and liberating a vast amount of energy in the process

Vapourware

Lots of promises, potentially massive energy gains

How would it be stored

Could it be anything other than explosive?

Hydrogen

danger

Difficulty ‘cracking’ water

Foodstuffs

Should be used to feed humans

Extraterrestrial mining

NEOs

Use less power

More efficient practices

Higher costs, rationing

Conflation of devices/appliances

Car pooling, public transport infrastructure

Power storage

Potential

Chemical capacitors

Kinetic capacitors e.g. flywheels

Chemical battery technology

Electric cars

Pushing pollution up the chain

Climate Change

200 years of pumping burnt oil into the atmosphere

Controversy - is it really happening?

Carbon neutral nonsense

Conspiracy theories

Oil industry lobbyists, influence

Wrap Up

Outro music choice - something open source so we don’t get sued, this time it’s a bit Miles Davis

Show Notes

‘Moores Law’ refers to a trend spotted by Gordon E. Moore in a 1965 paper entitled ‘Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits’ whereby the number of components on an ‘integrated chip’ roughly doubles every 2 years e.g. the number of transistors. The paper is available here (PDF).

American on track to export more oil than Saudi Arabia by 2020 (Bloomberg)

Tidal Power is energy from the motion of the tides not to be confused with Hydroelectric power which is energy from falling water.

“We're sorry for the massive disruption it's caused their lives. There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back." —BP CEO Tony Hayward, on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, May 31, 2010